This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Rocky movies were both motivation and inspiration for two generations of filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s family.

That’s what the 29-year-old director of Fruitvale Station talked about to persuade Sylvester Stallone to allow him to make Creed, the seventh film in the franchise, now playing.

“I was just always honest with (Stallone) and let him know what the movies meant to me,” said Coogler during a recent interview in Toronto — fittingly held in a Yonge St. boxing gym — along with Creed’s stars Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson.

For the first time, the Italian Stallion isn’t part of the movie’s title, nor did Stallone pen the script. That fell to Coogler and writing partner Aaron Covington.

Determined to make a movie that slotted into the Rocky world and stayed true to it, but with an updated vibe, his focus would be on Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Johnson. The troubled son of Rocky’s one-time rival and later friend and mentor, Apollo Creed, was born after his dad’s death in the ring (in 1985’s Rocky IV).

Article Continued Below

He reluctantly adopts his father’s name and pressures the retired Rocky into training him for a championship bout. But Rocky has his own enormous hurdle ahead.

It was an intensely personal project for Coogler, who said the Rocky movies helped his father deal with his own mother’s breast cancer when he was young. He later used the dramas to motivate Coogler in high school and college.

“Whenever I’d have a big football game or a big test at school, he’d say, ‘Hey man take 10 minutes, we’ll watch this scene from Rocky.’” Coogler recalled. “He’d get fired up … this’ll give you the juice! You’ll score five touchdowns a day. You’ll get an A on that test. I’d look over and say ‘Hey man, are we watching this for me or for you?’”

Coogler, Jordan and Thompson weren’t even born when Rocky premiered 39 years ago. But they were aware of its legacy.

“The first Rockys are easily one of the best American films about the underdog,” said Thompson (Selma). She plays Bianca, an aspiring singer who becomes involved with Adonis. She describes Stallone as “an awesomely eccentric, fantastic dude.”

Thompson observes Rocky audiences remain loyal because “they give us a sort of perspective of what’s possible with self determination, perseverance. That’s what the song means when you hear it,” she said, breaking into a few bars of the herald-like trumpet introduction to Bill Conti’s signature theme, “Gonna Fly Now.”

Jordan, who starred in Coogler’s breakout feature, Fruitvale Station, added: “The things that came to mind about the Rocky films was inspiration and the underdog and that’s kinda how I always look at myself a little bit; as an underdog …”

He spent 18 months training to convincingly play a fighter.

“He (Coogler) wasn’t going to allow me to fail,” said Jordan. “I felt very safe, he put me around people that knew exactly what they were doing and we were on top of things for about a year and half.”

Jordan was well prepared but despite practice and carefully choreographed fight scenes, things got real in the ring.

“It was intense. It was like organized chaos. It was crazy, especially the first fight that Adonis has in Philadelphia,” said Jordan.

Did he get hit? “Yeah a few times,” he admitted. “And sometimes that was the only way you could make those shots work.”

Stallone was “very involved in the process,” Jordan said, not only as a producer on Creed, but also because of his onscreen fight experience. He helped the actor avoid the kind of slip-ups that make moviegoers cringe, learning not to “oversell a punch, not taking the punch too soon, taking a long time, especially when you do slo-mo shots.

“You can't really fake it. You can’t cheat that at all,” said Jordan. “So I had to take some real punches.”

Coogler said his most difficult day on set was shooting an emotional scene involving Jordan and Stallone and the famous “Rocky steps” leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

He said the aging Rocky’s obvious physical struggles reminded him of his father, who has a neurological disease that makes movement difficult.

“That scene for me, it was the most emotional scene for me,” Coogler said. “I had to take a couple breaks.”

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com